Choose Your Test

SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

If you’re starting to think about your plans for college, you might be wondering what is considered a good high school GPA or a bad high school GPA in the eyes of admissions officers. This is a complicated question, and it depends on a few intersecting factors that colleges will take into consideration.

In this article, I’ll give you some perspective on what a good GPA and a bad GPA are based on national statistics and your individual circumstances. I’ll also provide a bit of advice on the best ways to improve your GPA.

Your coursework and GPA are one of the most important pieces to your college application - some colleges consider it your MOST important factor - so make sure you plan ahead and know where you fit in.

What’s a Good GPA Compared to the National Average?

Nationally, the average unweighted high school GPA is about a 3.0, which is a B average. If your GPA is above a 3.0, you’re most likely doing pretty well, but it all depends on how your school calculates GPA and what your ultimate goals are. Keep in mind that this is the average for all students in the country, which includes the 34% of high school students who don't go on to college. The average high school GPA for college bound students is most likely higher than a 3.0.

Typically a 3.5-4.0 GPA, which means an A- or A average, is expected for admission to top colleges. However, you may be able to gain acceptance to a less selective school with a GPA that’s as low as a 2.0 or C- average. The concrete numbers are less important than your individual experience and the details of how you earned your GPA, which I’ll discuss in the next section.

What’s a Good GPA for YOU?

This is a much more important question to ask yourself because every high school is different, and so is every student. Remember that colleges will take into account all the information they have about your high school when assessing your GPA. They don’t look at it out of context in comparison to the national average. Admissions officers realize that two students from different high schools may have different GPAs but relatively equal academic potential.

Determining what a good GPA and a bad GPA mean for you mainly means considering three different factors:

#1: Your School Overall

Does your school give you a weighted or unweighted GPA? At some high schools, two students might both have 4.0s that each mean something different because one student is in high level classes and the other is in lower level classes. If they are unweighted GPAs, colleges will consider the student who takes higher level classes to be more qualified. Even though both students are earning As, one is earning them with more challenging material.

If these are weighted GPAs, it might mean the student in high level classes is earning Bs and the student in lower level classes is earning As. In this situation, colleges will still look more favorably on the student in high level classes who was willing to take on more intellectual challenges. The point is that a better GPA doesn’t necessarily mean a higher one; you should challenge yourself with your coursework first and foremost. Don't drop down a level in a course so you can get an A - this won't fool colleges into thinking you're a more qualified applicant.

If your GPA isn’t perfect but you’re at the top of your class, this might just mean that your school is tough, and it would be nearly impossible to get a flawless GPA (even if students at other less rigorous schools manage it). Once again, colleges will understand these circumstances and take them into account. A 3.7 GPA at your school could potentially look better to admissions officers than a 4.0 GPA at another school.

#2: Your Classes

So you have all As in your classes and a 4.0 GPA - you’re doing awesome, right? Maybe, maybe not. If you’re getting all As in the highest level classes your school offers, yes, your GPA is amazing, and colleges will be extremely impressed. However, if you’re taking easy classes just because you know you can get As, the 4.0 on your transcript will not blind admissions officers to the fact that you’re not really challenging yourself.

This isn’t to say that everyone should try and take the highest level classes in every subject. You don’t want to kill yourself with stress, and it’s good for most people to have one or two less rigorous classes. But if there's a subject you’re really interested in or think you might want to pursue as a course of study in college, try and push yourself to take high-level classes. Even if it brings down your GPA a bit, it will demonstrate that you're a driven student who is willing to take risks to gain a better understanding of the subject. Taking progressively more challenging classes throughout high school, even if it doesn’t raise your GPA, makes your GPA “better” in the eyes of admissions officers because it’s hard-earned.

Climb to the peak of your academic potential! Man, I should write copy for motivational posters.

#3: Your Goals for College

Do you have your heart set on an Ivy League? Are you planning on attending your state school for a lower tuition price tag? What’s important to you in a college?At Harvard, for example, almost 90% of incoming freshmen have a GPA that’s above a 3.75 (the average GPA is a 3.93), meaning a solid A average. Considering the standards of top schools, it’s likely that most of those GPAs were earned in the highest level classes in high school. When you have this level of selectivity, students' coursework will be scrutinized just as closely as the numerical values of their GPAs; schools like Harvard are only looking for the top performing students in the highest level classes.

To give a slightly less selective example, at the University of Oregon the average GPA was a 3.6, meaning most students earned around a B+/A- average in high school. It's likely that the courseload of these students was also less challenging, so they may have taken a fair amount of mid-level or lower level classes in the process of earning their GPAs. These are students that have solid grades but are not at the very tops of their classes.

You'll need to take a look at the average GPA for incoming freshmen at your colleges of choice to get a sense of where you need to be.Of course, this statistic isn’t the be-all and end-all. Some students with lower than average GPAs will be accepted, and some students with higher than average GPAs will be rejected. It’s important to make sure you’re also looking at the other factors in conjunction with these statistics to figure out what the best GPA range is for you. In the next section, I'll go over how to find and make sense of this information.

Step by Step: Figuring Out a Good GPA for Your Situation

So how do you actually decide whether your GPA is good in the context of your plans for college? Follow these steps to get a more solid idea of where you are and where you need to be.

1. Make a list of colleges you think you're interested in. I would recommend Cappex for conducting a low stress college search and making a quick list of possibilities.

2. Research the average GPAs and admission rates for the colleges on your list. Make notes on these statistics so you can refer to them later. To find the admission rate and average GPA at any school, Google "college name" + "admission requirements" + "PrepScholar". We've compiled all the information in a database to make it simpler for you!

3. Compare your GPA to the average GPAs that you find at your schools.Are you above or below average? Most schools will give you unweighted GPA statistics, so if your GPA is weighted make sure to take this into consideration.

4. If you're above the average, that's great news! It most likely means that you have a good chance of admission. If you're below the average, you may still have a chance depending on how far off you are. This just means the school will probably be a reach for you.

5. As a last step, you should look at the admissions rates for your chosen colleges. Two schools may have very different admission rates but the same average GPAs. This means that the more selective school expects the same GPA but with more challenging coursework.

If a school has an admissions rate of less than 20%, you can assume that you're expected to have a record of very challening coursework in addition to meeting the average GPA standards.

If the admissions rate is between 20 and 40% the school will expect somewhat challenging coursework.

If the admissions rate is between 40 and 60%, the school will expect mid-level coursework, and if it's higher than 60% you will probably be able to get away with taking a fair amount of lower level classes as long as your GPA is still relatively high.

But I got an A+ in gym! I aced the rainbow parachute unit! HOW COULD THEY NOT WANT ME??

What Can You Do to Improve Your GPA?

I won’t sugarcoat this: It’s not easy to improve your GPA, and it only gets more difficult as high school goes on. If you’re a freshman or sophomore, you still have time to make significant changes. If you’re a junior, you should probably focus more on improving your test scores. Relative to time spent studying, test scores are the easiest way to improve your chances at college admission. They will be given about as much weight in the admissions decision as your GPA for most schools. If you can manage really good scores, you will have a much better chance of getting in even if your GPA is below average for admitted students.

I would say there are three main things that you can do if you want to make your GPA better in the eyes of colleges:

#1: Take Increasingly Harder Classes

This may seem paradoxical. Won’t your GPA go down if you take harder classes? Well, yes, the numbers might go down, but your GPA will be more impressive to colleges if it was earned in challenging classes. Try to level up as you progress through high school to show that you're willing to work hard for your grades. You should only follow this advice if your GPA is already good by the numbers but you aren’t taking difficult classes. If you’re struggling with your current course load, don’t risk moving up and failing a class! It’s your job to understand and respect your limits in terms of stress and time spent on schoolwork.

#2: Ask for Extra Help

A mistake that many struggling students make is that they don’t ask for help from their teachers. I understand that asking for help isn’t always easy - I know that I myself avoided it for years, and it only hurt me. Asking for help is the SMART thing to do, and it’s going to allow you to get the individual attention you might need in order to understand concepts better. Your teachers will appreciate that you’re making an effort, and you will most likely come away feeling more optimistic about your ability to grasp the material. This is going to be the one of the best ways to see a significant positive effect on your grades.

#3: Stick to a Schedule and Stay Focused

Easier said than done, right? But if you’re serious about improving your grades, this is the bottom line. Procrastination and lack of studying may be hurting your grades more than your academic ability. If you always do everything the night before for "long-term" projects or just glance over your notes briefly before tests, you may need to reassess your habits. Casually reading over the stuff you need to know doesn’t count as legitimate studying unless you go back and verify that you've absorbed it. Think critically about your study habits, and see if there are any areas where you can improve. If you need to create a schedule for yourself in order to keep up with your goals, go for it.

All you need is a calendar and some glue. That's how this works, right?

Final Assessment

What’s a good GPA? What’s a bad GPA? The real answer, as frustrating as this may be, is that it depends! Though the national average high school GPA is around a 3.0, that might actually be a very good GPA or a not so good GPA for you depending on your circumstances and goals. It’s important to consider how your school calculates GPA, the level of your coursework, and the selectivity of the schools you hope to attend in deciding whether your GPA is good.

Though GPA is very difficult to improve, you may be able to make significant changes if you’re a dedicated freshman or sophomore by challenging yourself with your coursework, asking for extra help, and revising your study habits.If it’s too late to significantly improve your GPA and you don’t feel that it’s quite as good as it should be, focus instead on improving your standardized test scores. This will give you a better return on investment for the hours you spend studying.

Remember that the actual number value of your GPA doesn’t matter nearly as much as the effort you put in to get there. Just keep working hard, and don’t get discouraged!

Samantha is a blog content writer for PrepScholar. Her goal is to help students adopt a less stressful view of standardized testing and other academic challenges through her articles. Samantha is also passionate about art and graduated with honors from Dartmouth College as a Studio Art major in 2014. In high school, she earned a 2400 on the SAT, 5's on all seven of her AP tests, and was named a National Merit Scholar.

Get Free Guidesto Boost Your SAT/ACT

Get FREE EXCLUSIVE insider tips on how to ACE THE SAT/ACT.

100% Privacy. No spam ever.

You should definitely follow us on social media. You'll get updates on our latest articles right on your feed. Follow us on all 3 of our social networks:

Twitter and Google+

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Bill Toyota

Hi, I heard that colleges compare a student with his peers at his school. Is that true? And, kind of related, do you know if some colleges put quotas on the number of students they take from a particular high school? The school that particularly interested in is UCLA and UC Berkeley.

Samantha Lindsay

Hi Bill,
Thanks for your question! Yes, to a certain extent colleges will compare students with their peers at the same high school. This helps them to make judgments about the degree of grade inflation that is present at a given school. For example, if a student has a very high GPA but a bunch of other students at his high school have similar GPAs, then it may not be as impressive. Colleges also know that at some schools it can be hard to stand out because the classes offered aren't as academically challenging. If the student took the most difficult classes available at his high school, then these limitations will be taken into account.
As far as I can tell, colleges do not place specific quotas on the number of students they will take from a given high school. If you're a California resident, I know that in the UC system the Eligibility in the Local Context program grants students in the top 9 percent of their high school class automatic admission to a UC campus if they have taken all the required classes (see the UC admissions website for more information). This is sort of like a quota, but there's no absolute limit on the number of students that will be admitted from each school.
Hopefully this was helpful!
Sam

Narumi

Hello
We are in Australia and our son goes to school whose curriculum is MYP programs till Year 10, the courses leading up to IB courses in Year 11 and 12. Because of this, the curriculum is pretty hard and it's lot more tough to get As compared to other schools in Australia which only offers normal Australian courses. His schools is considered to be the best academic school in the area. The reports come as 1-7 instead of ABCD as well. He is now in Year 10 and has been doing well, but not as well as being in an easier school where he will be getting all As. He has got a few Bs since Year 9. He is aiming at being accepted into Columbia, but we are worried that his GPA will not be good enough since he got some Bs in the last semester and the admissions won't know the details about the school abroad, how hard it is. We have no idea how GPA will be calculated from his school, weighed, non weighed, whether the courses is considered as IB courses or not, if they are, will it be written somewhere, etc. Will his GPA be a damage? In calculating non weighed, it is around 3.73-75 at the moment including PE, Art, IT, and Religous Studies which they have less hours of classes compared to English, Science, Math, Humanities, and French.
From the next year, he won't have those 4 subjects anymore and he will be taking English, Modern History, Math B, Math C(highest level Math), Physics, and Italian.
He is also a national level tennis player who represents State as well as competing in some international tournaments.
We will appreciate any advise and information.
Thank you so much!

Samantha Lindsay

Hi Narumi,
Thanks for your question! A difficult course load is more important to colleges than the actual numerical value of a student's GPA. Although you claim that colleges won't know your son's school is more challenging, I would say that this isn't necessarily true. Colleges will note the fact that average GPA at his school is lower than at other high schools, so they will be more likely to cut him some slack if he didn't get all As. If you don't know how his school calculates GPA, I would recommend speaking with administrators and asking them about this specifically. I'm sure they would be willing to answer your questions.
Also, with a 3.73-75 unweighted GPA, your son is within an acceptable range for students who are hoping to be admitted to highly selective colleges. If he ends up with high test scores I'd say he has a strong chance of getting into Columbia, especially considering his athletic ability. Going forward, he should continue to take the most challenging classes and prepare for standardized tests. I don't think you need to be too worried! Hope this helps.
Best,
Sam

Narumi

Thank you very much! That made us feel relieved. We don't think schools here calculate GPA like in the States and we will just submit the reports to NCAA (we are going through them) and someone calculates it for us, so until they do it, we won't know exactly. He is preparing for SAT, currently around 2000-2100 range in Year 10 in the practice tests. Another year to improve. He was told his writing needs no work, already good. How does it sound? If he needs help, we will definitely contact you guys.
Thanks!

Samantha Lindsay

Sounds like he is in great shape! Good luck, and feel free to contact us in the future if you have any more questions.
Best,
Sam

Emma

Hello. I'm a sophomore in highschool and currently have a 4.086 GPA. I'm in a couple hard classes but not all of them. I have to work really hard for my grades, and am afraid I'll be overwhelmed if I take any more hard classes, but I'd like to get into a more elite school that's very competitive. Should I push myself and take more harder classes? My grade is also really competitive, with kids getting straight as in all hard classes. Also, any tips on anything that would make me more appealing and stand out to colleges?

Samantha Lindsay

Hi Emma,
Thanks for your question! It sounds like you're already stressed out, and I would hesitate to tell you to take on even more difficult classes. It's not worth it to sacrifice your sleep and mental health in high school for a slightly higher GPA. If you get too overwhelmed with your work, you could also end up doing poorly in a class, which would be counterproductive to your goals. There are plenty of good schools out there, and your GPA is definitely high enough that you will be able to get a great education even if you don't end up at one of the most competitive colleges in the country. If you want to stand out more, I would say you should work on figuring out what you're most interested in and developing it into a concrete accomplishment or creative project. This article has some good advice (skip to the part about the spike): http://blog.prepscholar.com/how-to-get-into-harvard-and-the-ivy-league-by-a-harvard-alum. You can also work on raising your SAT or ACT scores. High test scores will make a pretty big difference in your admissions chances even without any change in GPA. I know it's tough to be surrounded by a bunch of other really intense students, but try not to worry too much about what other people are doing. Keep challenging yourself, but remember that it's ok to value your own sanity!
Best,
Sam

Emma

Thank you very much for replying! I get that I am too stressed a lot, haha. Working on it. I'm not trying to get into an Ivy League school, but I don't want my reluctant choices now to hold me back from getting into the college of my choice. Luckily I have time to decide. Definitely going to check out more articles. Thanks so much!

Samantha Lindsay

No problem! I'm sure you'll figure things out. :)

Jonathan Martinez

I currently am a junior in high school with a 2.5 GPA, but there's a reason to that, I help a lot in my home, since my family is that of a lower class, my mom's always doing the best she can and my father is always struggling with finding work. I spend lots of time trying to aid my younger siblings academically since my parents never had an education. I also help out my uncle on Saturdays as a gardener cleaning other people's yards. I'm really stressed on whether or not I'll be able to make it to college with this situation, but I am taking numerous honors classes and very few AP classes. I would really appreciate if you guys would tell me if I had a chance in going to college.

Samantha Lindsay

Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for your question! Based on what you've said here, you definitely have a chance of getting into college. Even though your GPA is a little low, it's not the end of the world. Take a look at this page to see what a 2.5 GPA might mean for your college chances: http://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/gpa/2.5-GPA-is-this-good-for-colleges.
It's impressive that you're still taking difficult classes even with all the extra work you put in to help your family. Make sure that you mention all the additional commitments you had in high school on your application next year (either in your essay or on your list of extracurriculars or both!). It sounds like you are a very conscientious, caring person, and that's something colleges will appreciate. Best of luck!
Sam

SAT® is a registered trademark of the College Entrance Examination BoardTM. The College Entrance Examination BoardTM does not endorse, nor is it affiliated in any way with the owner or any content of this site.